Fauna

by Alissa York

  Grandmother paused to smile at him, and he did his best to smile back. Then she bent her head and gave voice to the sweetest, most painful scene in the book. “‘Have you ever had a gallop on a horse?’”

  Darius hadn’t, of course, but it scarcely mattered; the words made space for him to climb on.

  “‘Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the bits and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws …’”

  The story should have ended when the ride on the lion’s back was done. True, the statues in the witch’s courtyard had to be brought back to life, and there was still the great battle to be fought, but Darius heard that chapter only distantly. Edmund had come good by then. He fought alongside Peter, but Darius found he couldn’t leave Lucy-Faye, so he watched with her from the sidelines like the coward he was. There was bloodletting, but not the particular blood Darius longed for. The lion simply rolled over the witch and she was dead.

  His own character was gravely wounded. Again he should’ve died, and again the story saved him—this time by having Lucy-Faye drip cordial into his mouth with trembling hands. The thought of it made Darius’s stomach turn over beneath his heart.

  Of course the good side won. Of course the four children became kings and queens, and threw a big party for all their new friends. The lion didn’t come, but nobody seemed to care. Lucy-Faye and Edmund-Darius and Susan and Peter got to live both lives—the royal one and the regular one they’d left behind in the professor’s home.

  Darius was barely listening by then. The story had let him loose, and he’d bobbed back up to the surface of his own life—the room, cramped and brown around him, Grandmother with her grey head bent, the old man out there somewhere, due home soon.

  16

  The City Book

  SATURDAY

  The coyote is the first one Lily’s seen in the valley. She’s had hints of their presence before now—twists of hair-and-bone shit on the footpaths, the occasional shortlived howl—but they seem to keep a low profile in the city. And now she can see why.

  Billy found the body, veering off the footpath with a jerk and crashing into the brush. Lily raised a hand to whistle him back but let it drop. There was something in there. Chances were it wasn’t good, but it had to be significant to work on him like that. She stood on the path for several seconds, then ducked to enter the twig tunnel he’d made.

  It was dense but passable, patterned shadows and viscous light. She hadn’t far to go before she saw Billy humped over whatever it was. For a moment the tail was a ponytail, fluffy and blond. A girl, she thought, jeans down around her ankles—because that’s what you find in the bushes, isn’t it? Sooner or later, that’s what you find.

  Now, as Billy noses over the body, hindquarters to head, Lily stands twisting her hands, a fellow mourner watching the widow weep over the corpse. Not that Billy was ever partial to the living article. She can remember standing at her bedroom window one fall evening and seeing him emerge from his doghouse, snout lifting to the breeze. Moments later, a high, mad song came floating. Billy bristled. Watching him, Lily felt her own hair—natural then, long and honey blond—felt it too rise up in its roots.

  One coyote, then another, loped into view on the neighbouring field. The first came to a halt, tilting its head back as though its neck were a well-oiled hinge. The sound it offered up was unearthly; Lily felt the thrill run through her, heard it echo in the second coyote’s response. Giving voice, it leapt spine-first like a frightened cat. Landed and yelped and leapt again, this time rearing up on its hind legs like a man. The first sprang and gambolled, yodelling. Together they paused, together they broke into movement again, passing the song between them like a bone. Billy kept quiet, puffed and rigid out front of his little plywood house, but Lily pressed her forehead to the glass and whispered along. Owooo, ow-ow-owooooo.

  Having smelled the whole story, Billy sits down heavily, whining through his nose. Lily takes a step closer to the coyote. Even she can smell it now, the pungent presence of the newly dead. No torn-open throat or belly, no obvious signs of disease—nothing save a raw, swollen look about the nose and eyes. It’s rangy, the way they are, though not overly thin. A little moult along the back, but the coat is still fine. Lovely, in fact. Unmarked.

  Except there, where the slender foreleg comes to a sudden end.

  She sees it now, the patch of darkened earth, probably still wet with blood. She’d like to believe a trap did it; as in so many stories, the wild creature chewed its own foot off to be free. Except a chewed-off paw would leave a raggedy stump, and this one’s neat and clean.

  Fear rolls like a raindrop down her back. She meets Billy’s glistening eye. “Let’s get out of here.” He looks willing enough, but when she stands, he stays planted, making that crying sound. She drops her voice half an octave. “Billy, come.”

  He obeys. Thank Christ, he rises and obeys.

  Coyote Cop’s Blog

  Saturday, May 31, 2008

  Well apologies to the vermin-loving coyote huggers among you but its time to talk turkey as they say. Its all very well knowing theres a problem but if you keep on turning a blind eye or the other cheek your not just ignoring the situation your making it worse. Leave it alone people say it will go away. Only thats not the way problems work. Not the big ones. The big ones keep on growing until sooner or later they get bigger than you.

  So how do I do it you ask. How do I kill a coyote? Lots of ways. Poison is easy to get hold of but tricky to use in town. Dogs are too good at nosing out baits and once you kill a dog or two accidentally or otherwise you will have all kinds of crap to deal with. Of course certain breeds can be an ally in the cause but there again you run into trouble in the city. A pack of coyote hounds can tear the legs off a coyote in under a minute but it just takes one concerned citizen to hear the baying and your shut right down. Same thing with traps. You might think you can find a trail or two in the Don Valley where people don’t go but there’s people and then theres people. Nobody gives a rats ass about drunks and junkies most of the time but you can bet there would be all kinds of hell to pay if they started tripping leg-hold traps and losing their stinky feet.

  So what can you do? Ever hear of a little something called a go-getter? Its pretty simple. Just a cyanide canister with a detonator attached. You bury it near one of their trails with a rag or a bit of wool tied to the detonator and left sticking up out of the ground. Rub a mixture of meat and musk into the rag and then all you have to do is take up your position and wait. Not too close or you will give away the game. You have to stick around or else you can bet a dog will mess with your set up and it will be the poison story all over again. Besides believe me you will want to be there.

  You might be waiting for hours. You might feel your ass go numb or you might even drop off and have to pinch yourself awake but sooner or later he comes trotting along that trail. When he does theres no way he’s going to pass up that smelly tuft of rag. He sniffs. Pretty soon he gets his teeth into it and tugs. Bang. Cyanide in his eyes and nose and mouth. Its like he’s trying to take his own face off. And after not so very long he’s gone.

  Maybe some of you think I’m all talk and no action. Well maybe you ought to take a look at this.

  POSTED BY Coyote Cop at 7:23 AM

  It takes Darius several tries to post the photo. He smiles when it finally appears. It’s true what they say about a thousand words.

  He quits the browser, rises to close the blinds against the brightening day. Trying to take his own face off. Lying down on the thin green foamy, Darius finds he can see it, clear as a YouTube clip—the coyote pawing furiously at its eyes, grinding its snout along the ground. It’s there whether he shuts his eyes tight or opens them to stare at the ceiling’s stippled dark.

  He sits up, blinking. Better. Rolls up onto his feet. Better still.

  He could turn on the TV, but it never seems to soothe him the way it did when he was small. There’s
nowhere to go in the cramped bachelor apartment he calls home. The bathroom scarcely counts; it’s little more than a closet with plumbing. Still, it offers a threshold to cross.

  The linoleum is sticky beneath his bare soles. His bladder is far from full, but he manages to squeeze out a stream and a couple of follow-up squirts. Shake it and tuck it away. Now what?

  Maybe he needs something to eat. He had the last of the bread last night before heading out, but there should still be a little ham, maybe even a can of beer. He doesn’t bother turning on the light—the handle of the fridge door gleams.

  There is a beer, and a single pink slice in the package marked Old-Fashioned Honey-Baked. Plus one item more. It can’t be an hour since he placed it carefully on the middle rack; how can he have forgotten it was there?

  He’s had trouble thinking clearly about the thing in general—including why he felt the need to take it with him in the first place. He hadn’t planned that part; he had the hunting knife on him only because he always does. You have to be ready for close combat when the enemy walks on soundless feet.

  The coyote hadn’t been dead a minute when Darius heard voices coming through the trees. Teenagers, it sounded like, young love. They were laughing too hard for him to make sense of what they were saying, the boy making drowning sounds, the girl screeching like a hungry gull. They never got close enough for Darius to consider running, but he played it safe all the same, waiting until they moved off before taking the body by its front paws and dragging it into the scrub.

  Maybe that was what put the idea into his head—the long bones springy in his grasp, the claws tickling bluntly at his wrists. It was darker than dark inside the maze of brush. He drew the knife from its sheath and did what he had to by feel.

  It’s the first time Coyote Cop has included a picture. For a moment Stephen can’t make sense of the image, his mind rejecting the input of his eyes. It’s like one of those bare-bones shots they have in old recipe books—only instead of a sweating sausage roll or a wedge of devil’s food cake, the plate holds a bloodied paw.

  His heart’s already racing when Lily bursts in through the office door.

  The whole way here, he’s been hoping she somehow got it wrong. Billy leads him into the bushes while Lily stands guard with the bike. No mistake. It’s definitely a coyote, definitely vital-signs-absent.

  Billy worries over the carcass, concluding his mute appraisal at the tip of the truncated leg. Stephen sways a little, hands braced on his knees. There are flies, some sticking close to the wound, others buzzing in Stephen’s ears. The coyote is what it is, a dead, four-legged thing—at least until he stoops to pick it up.

  They’d been on patrol for three long, scorching days when the village came into view: another mud-walled maze surrounded by bizarrely verdant fields—acres of grapes, a whiskery tract of what might have been wheat. The place seemed deserted. Definitely emptied of women and children, but as always the question of fighting-age males remained.

  The answer came in the crackle of small-arms fire, followed by the shriek of an RPG. Contact was hot and brief, the bird gunners in the LAV laying down cover while the troops on the ground moved in. Stephen scarcely had time to fire his weapon before the enemy was in retreat, a handful of thin, turban-topped backs glimpsed weaving between walls, plunging away into green.

  In keeping with his training, Stephen followed a blood trail into the field of vines. Fighting-age. The one he found curled up in a furrow might have been anywhere from sixteen to twenty-five; the life there aged them strangely. Whatever his age, he was hugging himself like a kid with a gut-ache—only the ache was the actual red mass of his guts. Again, Stephen did what he’d been trained to do. The enemy weighed nothing—no body armour, no weapon, no boots.

  The child in the recruitment poster had lain quiet, gazing up at his saviour with adoring eyes, but the man in Stephen’s arms struggled like a goat going to slaughter. Stephen stumbled back through the grapes and the whispering sway of grain, unsure of his balance, his strength—unsure of anything but a need to reach the casualty collection point. The Talib was starting to settle, shock or blood loss or both. Soon he would be co-operating to the full.

  “Stephen,” said the medic. “Hey, Stephen.” Only the medic was holding a bicycle. The medic was a skinny, pink-haired girl.

  Stephen stands blinking in the light.

  “You found him,” Lily says.

  “Yeah,” he says numbly.

  “Come on, put him in the basket. Hurry up.”

  Kate feels like a fraud. She should be toasting and grinding her own spices—or at least making the trip to Little India to buy fresh. It’s not her fault she never learned. On the rare occasion when she ate curry as a child, the food came in Styrofoam containers, and Daddy never finished what was on his plate.

  Lou-Lou was the one who introduced her to India in a jar. It soon became tradition: Kate’s one night a week to make dinner was curry night. Mmm, smells good. What are we having, Ms. Patak?

  Opening the cupboard beside the stove, Kate surveys a line of purple labels. The fiery Vindaloo Paste was Lou-Lou’s favourite, but Kate will stick with something milder for tonight. Better to play it safe with Lily and her friends.

  Lily can’t believe what she’s reading. “Jesus,” she says, coming to the end of the most recent post, “this guy’s fucking cracked.”

  “I know.” Stephen leans in over her shoulder. “Scroll down, there’s more.”

  “How long has he been posting this shit?”

  “Since Monday. I should’ve told you sooner.”

  “You think I don’t know there’s creeps down there?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “You know someplace there aren’t any?”

  That shuts him up. She reads on until he says quietly, “I’ve been commenting.”

  She swivels the chair round to face him. “You have?”

  “Yeah, well, soldierboy has. You should take a look at those too.”

  “Take a look at what?” Guy says, stepping through the office door. Billy rouses himself and goes to greet him. “Hey, Billy-boy.” He pats the dog’s side. “Take a look at what?”

  Lily glances at Stephen, who directs his gaze to the floor.

  “Okay,” Guy says, “I’ll start. I see there’s a fresh mound of dirt around back.”

  Again Lily takes her cue from Stephen, who nods but keeps his mouth shut.

  “Well, what is it?”

  Lily takes a breath. She found the body, she should be the one to say. “A coyote.”

  “What? Where did you—”

  “You’d better take a look at this.” Stephen’s voice is calm. It helps steady Lily’s nerves.

  “Yeah,” she says, “pull up a chair.”

  The three of them read over the whole thing, Stephen reaching for the mouse to guide them, post to comment to post. When they reach the bottom, Guy sits back, running both hands through his hair. “Holy shit.”

  “I should’ve said something after the first post,” Stephen says. “I thought, I don’t know … I thought I could get through to him.”

  Lily laughs, short and sharp. “You think you can get through to a sick fuck like that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Stephen’s face is miserable. “I guess not.”

  “Lily,” Guy says gently, “are you sure it’s a good idea, you camping out down there?”

  “Maybe she could stay here—” Stephen begins.

  Lily stands abruptly. “I can take care of myself.”

  “We know you can,” says Guy. “We know. It’s just—”

  “I have to get to work.”

  Stephen steps back to let her pass. “You have a job?”

  “Yes, I have a job.”

  “Where?”

  “Yeah,” Guy says, “where?”

  She wants to say none of your business—maybe even scream it—but it suddenly hits her that this is nowhere near true. At the door she turns to face them. “The Preci
ous Pearl, okay? I’m the dish pig at the Precious fucking Pearl.” The quaver in her voice only makes her madder. “Happy?”

  They nod.

  “Good. Come on, Billy, let’s go.”

  soldierboy wrote …

  Buried explosive devices—now where have I heard that idea before? You never did say what this war of yours is about, so here’s a theory of my own. You’re scared. Never mind that it makes no sense, you’re scared shitless of coyotes and you think if you kill them the fear will go away. Well, guess what? The fear doesn’t live in the coyote. It lives where you feel it, down deep in those guts you keep talking about. And look what’s happening to you in the meantime. You’re the kind of guy who squats in the bushes for hours on end just hoping for the chance to watch a fellow creature suffer a painful and terrifying death. And even then you’re not satisfied. You have to mess with the body. Maybe you figure taking a piece of it with you will make that low-down feeling stop. So how’s that working out for you? I’m willing to bet, paw or no paw, you’re still walking around scared to death.

  POSTED AT 10:48 AM, May 31, 2008

  She’s just out walking—maybe down to Queen Street for a gelato, maybe all the way to Cherry Beach to watch the dogs run. Out walking, nothing more.

  Edal turns at Mt. Stephen Street like a streetcar following its rails. At the gate, she presses the buzzer with a trembling finger. Fights a ridiculous urge to run.

  This time he appears in the kitchen doorway. He’s wearing the rawhide jacket; the fringe work dances as he jogs toward her across the yard. She feels suddenly, sickeningly overdressed. Navy blue shorts and a white sleeveless top—what is she, a sailor? She misses her uniform. Longs for it. She’s never known how to dress.